Right to exam

Calcutta/Siliguri, March 10: Seven students will sit for their HS exam tomorrow armed with court orders and not admit cards.

Six students of Nischintapur RD High School in Kulpi, South 24-Parganas, had been denied admit cards for allegedly not submitting application forms in time.

The students blamed the school for the delay in forwarding their forms to the council. “We can’t suffer for its mistake,” they said. Justice M. Sinha asked the council to allow them to write their exam by showing copies of today’s order.

Biswajit Mukherjee of Kodalia Agapur High School at New Barrackpore, North 24-Parganas, was accused by the council of skipping practical classes for three months at a stretch. But his school refuted the charge. Biswajit will write the exam but his result will not be published till disposal of the case.

Over 4.4 lakh candidates will appear in HS across Bengal. In north Bengal, the number of students has increased this year by more than 10,000.

Mukta Narginari, the deputy secretary of the council’s north Bengal division, said this time, the total number of regular candidates is 55,458 against last year’s 44,833. Of them 22,740 are girls. Apart from then, there are another 19,560 external candidates as well.

The number of exam centres has also increased in north Bengal — from last year’s 46 to 52 this time. Fourteen candidates with disabilities will also sit for the exams from the region this year.

In Calcutta, a control-room to receive exam-related complaints will be open from 7.30am to 5.30pm on exam days. Its numbers are (033) 2337-4984 to 4987 and (033) 2337-4945.

Madhyamik scripts

Thirty-three corrected Madhyamik geography answer scripts were found lying by a road in Hooghly’s Haripal today. Local resident Tushar Singha Ray first spotted the bundle, wrapped in a polythene bag and called police.

Swapan Sarkar, the secretary of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, confirmed that the papers were this year’s. Forty-nine physical science answer scripts went missing from Surya Sen Street in Calcutta on Wednesday. A retired teacher, an examiner, lost them while heading home to Taherpur in Nadia from the head examiner’s house in Howrah. A young man who claimed to be his former student and offered help to carry the papers allegedly fled with them.